The Heldrich, New Brunswick

It has been a very slow start to the summer and as I was in my studio making the brides bouquet (listening to my 2 1/2 year old stomping around like an elephant upstairs) I was happy to be preparing for a wedding, spending some quiet time with my flowers.

As a graduate of Rutgers University it was back to my old stomping grounds. Although, from all the work that's been done there, especially in that zone between Rutgers College and Cook that none of us would dare venture, I actually got a little turned around trying to find the hotel.

The Boutonnieres were made of green mini chrysanthemums, green hypericum berries, and mint leaves (which were fresh out of my own herb garden). The groom's stood out with the addition of a green rose.

Grandma had a corsage of mint leaves, hypericum berries, a green rose and a calla lily (The name of this beautiful dark purple calla is Naomi... and no I don't name my flowers...it's the color name ;)

The Mothers each carried an bouquet of a single XXL White Calla Lily.

The Maid of Honor carried a bouquet of green roses (Green Tea and Super Green, these are the ones with the frilly looking petals), purple roses (Cool Water), and white roses (Tibet).

The Bridal Bouquet was so much fun to make. The Bride had sent me a picture to base it off of and I think I nailed it...toot toot! (...that's me being a cornball and tooting my own horn!) Included in the bouquet was green, purple, and white roses, fiddle head fern (the funky curly thing sticking up out of it), green cymbidium orchids, dark purple callas, and white and purple bi-color calla's (named Picasso). I had to include a close up picture.

The centerpieces competed for the largest ones I have ever made...I loved how they turned out. And some of them played double duty at the alter. I'm hoping the photographer, Kay English, (click on her name to check out her work...it's seriously some beautiful photography, she is very talented, and very friendly) got some better shots, it was really dark in the ballroom.

There were 20 tables...1/2 had the tall centerpieces and 1/2 had submerged dendrobium orchids with a light in the bottom and floating candle on top.

(And of course I had some fun with the little amount of flowers I had leftover....

And as a reward for our hard work my assistant (aka my husband..who I met at RU...and who lets me call him my assistant on jobs so I look more professional...very cute) and I went right over to the Greece Trucks and got ourselves a Chicken Gyro with hot sauce "extra juicy". My husbands exact words were "hello my old friend". Now that I think of it I should have gotten a Fat Koko!...they used to call me "station wagon" at the trucks because I drove an old '78 dodge aspen station wagon....ahh I could go on and on....well at least I can get that Fat Koko in two weeks. My next wedding is at the end of July at Rutgers Gardens.

Fun with Flowers

I love going into the flower district in NYC to buy supplies and pick up flowers.  

It's early in the morning, the city is just waking up, and the gorgeous flowers are such a contrast to the hard edge the city can sometimes have.

And I love to play around with designs.

So here is some of my fun.

I used hydrangea (which was a light green with some spots of hot pink) Hot Lady and Hot Princess Roses with loops of bear grass to create these designs.

First a bouquet

And a possible matching centerpiece

I also had some yellow roses, which I can't remember their actual name.  But I thought they looked great with the small green chrysanthemums and a mix of a few types of pink roses.

(Bugatti, Purple Cezanne, Hot Lady and Hot Princess)

Here was my vision for the bridal bouquet, with green cymbidium orchids

The Bridesmaids would carry similar bouquets

Add Yellow Roses

Minus Green Cymbidiums

And for the mothers...

And all three together

This is just a little something I made with some red roses I picked up.

Hope all of your wedding planning is going smoothly!  Remember to have fun with flowers too;)

Nanina's in the Park

Orchids and more Orchids.  

I love working with them for weddings.

They make fabulous boutonnieres and hold up great in the summer heat.

This wedding took place on June 10th at Nanina's in the Park, Bloomfield NJ.  

It was a beautiful location and the bride was looking to save money on the flowers but wanted something that would stand up to the grandure of the location

Here's what we came up with.

The colors for the wedding were Green, Yellow, and White.

The Brides Bouquet was very labor intensive, as each cymbidium orchid needed to have a stem created for it.  They grow on a stalk, with about 8-12 flowers per stalk.  It took close to 5 stalks to create this bouquet and it was by far the heaviest one I have ever created.

I think that all the time and effort was worth it though.

(In the picture you can also see scratch from the fight I lost with a rose as I was putting them in water for the backyard wedding I posted a few days ago!)

The Bridesmaids also had cymbidium orchids in their bouquets, theirs were yellow, with white hydrangea.  

Here are all the bridesmaids bouquets together.  There were 8!

Because of their size the Centerpieces had to be made on location.

The room had cathedral ceilings and the bride wanted to make sure they filled out the space.  After going through a few ideas and trying to work them into the budget here is what we came up with.

These arrangements are made of oncidium orchids with green hydrangea in the fishbowl.  I would have loved to use hydrangea the same color as the brides bouquet, a bright vivid green, but it just wasn't in the budget.  A lighter shade of green was chosen instead because it was grown domestically, the brighter green would had to have been flown in from Holland at twice the cost!

Here is the arrangement on the patio where we were making them.

Here they are placed on their pedestals inside the location.

Great tip...many reception sites have stands like these, but they usually charge a fee to use them...sometimes up to $300 extra! Ask them when you are booking if you can use them, if that's your vision, and many times..to secure your business, they'll throw the use of them in for free.

I always order a little more than I'll need.  You have to take into account that some of the flowers just won't make it to the big day.   The extra that do make it always come with me on site.  I look to see what needs a little something.

This was a sad card table with just the cards...I added some of the extra hydrangea to brighten it up.  

And I love this idea, at the guest book the bride included old photos from weddings in her family. 

So tomorrow I am off to invest in a nice camera.  Right now I've been using my little canon elf.  And while the pics aren't bad I know how much better they would be if I had a professional camera.  So we'll see if you can tell the difference in the photo's from the next wedding on August 29th.